Friday, 25 March 2011

Shalom from Israel. I haven't blogged for a while because I have been so busy so it was hard to find time to write. I have also not been too well. My arthritis has flared a lot and over the last 6 months I seem to have been in one long flare up that refused to go. It used to be that I would get one or two flare ups a year, each lasting for 3-4 weeks and then it would go, but this one was changing every day. I decided that if it didnt go I would come back to Israel to revisit Ady Shanan and the IPEC Therapy clinic that helped me so much 7 years ago. I arrived on Wednesday night and had my first treatment yesterday and already it has got me asking many questions. Last time I was here for 6 months I ended up doing a little soul searching which I think was part of my recovery. It seems the soul searching has begun again, without me even realising that this would be the case, so this is the reason I wanted to write a blog.

Since I returned from Israel last time, I guess I was a changed person; I see life in a completely different way now and I have strong views and opinions about life, death and all things related. I meditate most days, I eat healthily, I dont drink or do drugs and I believe in helping others in order to help yourself. Because of this I suppose I thought that all my so-called 'Soul Searching' days were over, because I had 'found' my soul, so to speak. The great thing about IPEC and Ady Shanan (the practitioner), is that it always gets you thinking. IPEC treats the person as a whole - mind, body and soul - and so you have to really know whats going on with you in order to get better. You find these things out through a method called muscle testing, or kinesiology. The practitioner asks questions and your body responds through the subconsious. The subconsious mind holds most of the things that cause us to be a certain way but we do not know why. Consciously, we know we are hungry, upset, angry etc etc but I can not tell you why, when I work so hard to stay healthy, the inflammation keeps returning or why I hold anger or resentment towards certain people or situations. All this information is stored in our subconscious mind and this is what causes 'allergies'. So the practitioner goes through a huge list of foods, surroundings, conditions and emotions to see what the subconscious mind says the body is 'allergic' to. You hold your right arm up while the practitioner tries to push it arm down but you have to resist. If the answer is no you will keep resisting but if the answer your subconcsious wants to give is YES, your arm will drop and you have no control over it whatsoever. This is how we get the answers we need in order to be able to get rid of the allergies.

Seven years ago, most of my 'allergies' were to food, but this time it seems it is mostly conditions, environment and emotional issues so I now need to release these. Ady helps me do this through IPEC using a range of different methods and instruments which include reflexology, acupuncture, homeopathy, bio engergy and psychology to name a few, but I need to help the process along by saying, doing or even writing certain things. Yesterday - my first treatment in 7 years - my body decided that the thing I needed to work on the most was Pressure, Load, Self Esteem and Guilt. I had to write this sentence down:

'I am healing and feeling better and better all the time'.

I then had to keep the post-it note inside my bra - so it would be close to my heart meridian - and then write the sentence down 14 times a day, every day for 7 days. (13 to go now today!) (Does typing count??)

Affirmations are very powerful, and trying to get negative people to understand their importance is sometimes difficult. If you are told since you are a child 'you are ugly, you are ugly, you are ugly', you will grow up believing you are ugly because this becomes a thought process that sits in your subconsious. You genuinely believe that you are ugly because your subconscious mind believes it. But if you say enough times 'I am beautiful, I am beautiful, I am beautiful', eventually your subconsious will catch on and replace the negative thought with a positive one. This is what I am trying to do with my affirmation. I need my subconsious mind to believe I am, and can always be healthy, so that I can get better and stay better.

So where does the soul searching come in, you may ask, seeing as all I've spoken about up until now are things that I already practice and use on a daily basis. Well, firstly, it seems I hold a lot of guilt about my illness affecting those around me and I have to let that go in order to move on. If I want to get better, I cannot allow my illness to affect me emotionally in any way at all. Guilt and resentment are very dangerous emotions. Ady explained that I have to let go of my guilt. You can take responsibilty for something and work through it that way, but let go of the guilt. So I am working on this now, and on forgiveness for people or situations I resent.

'I let go of all guilt and all resentment. I forgive easily' (another affirmation to release these emotions.)

The second part, and I think most insightful, is Beliefs. According to my subconscious, I have a lot of belief changes going on which I need to work through. I found this so interesting because in the last year it has dawned on me (and surprising that this only started once I reached the age of 26) that all the religious beliefs that have been instilled in me since I was a child, are changing. Out of nowhere, I began questioning why exactly I believed in certain rules and religious beliefs. Was it because I had been told to or because I genuinely believed in it myself? Ady said this is something I should go away and think about, work through and get to the bottom of what it really is that I believe in. So this is my task now. I know that I believe in, and feel a very strong connection to Judaism. I love the history, I am certainly a Zionist. I believe that Jewish people should have a place they can call home just like Buddhists, Muslims and Christians do. But how much of the actual religious side do I believe in? I am not so sure and this is what I need to go away and figure out. As far as I can tell, I think I believe in Spirituality as a whole rather than one particular religion. I think we all started as souls and chose bodies to come into in order to learn lessons and progress spiritually. How does this fit into my religious beliefs? Well, this is what I need to figure out and I hope to be back here soon with answers. I am going to be in Israel for 3 weeks having intensive treatments so I hope that when the time comes for me to return home, I will have some answers, and that the clarity of my answers will assist in my recovery.Stay safe everyone.Love and light,Lauren

About Me

Author of 'My Enemy, My Friend' - about surviving Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Patient Spokesperson for the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine. Trustee of the British Homeopathic Association. Public Speaker. Campaigner. JRA Survivor. Animal Lover. Positivity lover! Please follow my 'written documentary' on what it is like to live with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis.